What It Feels Like
by EllenBelle
Summary: Two people, one dungeon, complex emotions. Set after "The War", not DH compliant.


The darkness was suffocating; the silence, overwhelming. An air of foreboding fell over the room like a fog and covered the occupants in a cold grasp. The atmosphere was filled with a charge, a static, that couldn't be alleviated. The electricity resonated in their veins and bound the two people together in a perverted fate.

Tear filled eyes, with pale eyelashes stuck in clumps of grit and salt, squinted when a sliver of light pierced the dark as the door swung open. Her lips were pressed tightly shut; she was hoping beyond hope that despite it all she would stay in control. That she could keep the frayed ends of her sanity together. Footsteps echoed in the quiet and then they were together in the confined space. Breaths quickened in tandem as the heavy door slammed back, closing out any light or hope that an imagined escape might have held. But there was no escape from what compelled the slight bodied figure in the doorway. It had been many long days and just as many equally long nights, but she had persevered.

With nought but a slight change in the silence, she bowed her head in acknowledgement of what was about to happen. She could feel the texture of the leather as it brushed against her skin, shuddering at the overwhelming emotion that the sensation bought out in her. She waited for it, for the moment when the whip would crack and the world would explode into stars.

*****

She had spent the first few days in the small room disoriented and bewildered. The actions of both parties were beyond what she could comprehend. How had someone once so young and naive become someone so unrecognisable?

By the seventh day she had associated the creak of the dungeon door with the pain that she knew was to come. Implements of torture hung on the walls, and in the near blinding darkness she could identify their material by touch alone. The leather of the whip, that one was a favourite. The well cared for instrumentcould feel as soft as butter or as solid as stone, it all depended on how it was used. Then there was the abrasive touch of scaled skin. Crude dragon hide or Basilisk shedding she would never know, but it was hard and rough and astonishingly painful as it bound wrists to wrists, to ankles, to the iron rings that would lift you up and suspend you in the dank air of the pit.

*****

Once soft skin had been calloused over the past week, torn open again and again until scabs and scars littered the pristine epidermis. He moaned as the skin tore again under the lick of the leather strips, crimson liquid sluggish from dehydration. It must be somewhat satisfying, she thought, to have the warm liquid flow over the cold skin. But she couldn't quite feel it. Something was missing, her soul maybe. But the whip kept on cracking and the blood continued to flow until time was measured in the metallic tang on the air.

*****

There were times when the hours seemed to trickle past like a dying stream, slow and painful and agonising. Other times, she wondered whether so many days could have passed so quickly. But yet here she was… with him.

She had come to the Manor with the mission to retrieve the youngest Malfoy and return with him to the Ministry, victorious and worthy of her position. But something had happened. The War had changed them both; they were no longer the scared young students from Hogwarts with their House rivalries. And between the deep-seated traditions of the family and the ghosts of the deeds done in the Manor, two young adults had become involved in a relationship much more sinister.

*****

They had never been friends, however something inside her knew that this behaviour was wrong. The pain wasn't just for herself – it was for them both and the connection between the two of them. The connection that they missed in school, he said. She thought she believed him.

She had found a pattern to the brutality. Although she couldn't quite put her finger on it, she knew it had something to do with the way his blond hair fell across his face. It was frustrating, there was an anger in his eyes but it was shallow and the fear was easily seen through the façade.

The pain, however, was no façade. Wrists were chaffed, skin was on fire, hunger and dehydration were beyond a joke, and blood seeped through hastily performed healing spells. As the body was dumped ungraciously on the stone floor, he barely had the strength to groan in pain. Ginny knelt at his side, and dragged her tongue across the cuts on his face.

"Now you know what it's like to be loved, Draco."


End file.
